Buddhas that aren't golden (for a change)

I met my parents and the guide at Shanghai airport. Our guide was in his twenties, with an ear piercing and a flashy cell phone he had trouble putting away. In the morning of our first day he took us to the Jade Buddha temple. This temple reminded me a little of the Lama temple in Beijing. While the Lama temple is housed in a former palace, this one looks like it used to be a wealthy person’s home, in terms of architecture. And while the Lama temple features some Tibetan art and imagery, the Jade Buddha temple features, well, a Buddha made of jade. Actually, there are two.

According to the story, a monk brought about five jade statues from Burma, though three of them were more like statuettes. The two large ones—one a sitting Buddha and the other a reclining one—were actually hidden from view from the Cultural Revolution until the eighties. They’re significantly smaller than many other Buddhas I’d seen on my trips, but none the less impressive, given the material they were carved out of. Unfortunately, photos of the jade Buddhas were not allowed.

The jade statues aren’t all there is to see in the temple. I found two other interesting statues, the Laughing Buddha (also called Budai), and the armor-clad Veda. There was also a curious depiction of a female deity, Guanyin, whose particular role in the Chinese Buddhist pantheon I cannot recall.

The incense burner in the main courtyard

Depiction of Guanyin, a female deity

Another courtyard, seen from the hallway leading to the Jade Buddhas. From here, the temple really looks like a villa, I think.

Shanghai or This Blog isn't Dead

Just because six months have come and gone and we have been back from Asia for quite some time now, it doesn’t mean the tale of our travels is over. It’s just that it’s harder to find both the time and the mental availability to update this blog these days. We ended up staying in Asia for one more month than the six originally planned, and aside from exploring more of Singapore, we were able to take two more trips abroad.

In late September, it was Steve’s turn not to go, this time to Shanghai. I met my parents there, who had been taking essentially the Beijing tour we’d been on back in July, except for a stop in Xi’an.

Shanghai is a very different city from Beijing. Sure, they’re both quite large and populous and undergoing and immense development, but in feel they are very apart. For all the glass and concrete skyscrapers, Beijing is still very much the stately head of the government, while Shanghai is the cosmopolitan center of business. If I had to choose one of them to live in, I wouldn’t think twice about picking Shanghai, since, at least for the time being, there is a lot more to do there, even though there are certainly less tourist attractions.

Said tourist attractions are the centered around the European-influenced Bund and French Concession, the Yu Yuan Gardens, a (then) privately-owned and more sensibly sized version of the Summer Palace, the Jade Buddha temple, and the new developments around the city, namely the Pudong.

Besides these must-see places, Shanghai is a fine place just to walk around, admiring the European and industrial-type architectures, or shopping for great bargains at a thousand little boutiques that seem to sprout like mushrooms. It’s also the original place of Dim Sum and therefore a great city to indulge your palate, not just in Chinese cuisine, but in many other types of food you’ll find in all sorts of restaurants. At night, there are several bars and shows to choose from, as well as the more traditional option of attending an acrobatics show (apparently, the acrobats are more a tradition of Shanghai than Beijing, which surprised me.)

Interestingly enough, despite a having a great number of expats and a generally international feel, it’s hard to find anyone in Shanghai—except in hotels—that will speak other languages than Mandarin. In my next posts I will go into more detail about the places we visited and the things we did. Also, I have videos.